August 15, 2008

Below is our newsletter for the week. Remember, we are not the end-all, be-all! We are just teachers sharing our thoughts and ideas with you. Feel free to modify strategies you receive from us to fit you and your classroom.

I've started an Inspiring Teachers Group on Facebook.com and encourage you to join! Having recently been introduced to the idea behind social groups like Facebook, I thought it would be a great idea to create a group for those of us who are, or at least continue to aspire to be, inspiring teachers! I hope you'll search for it on Facebook and join. If you don't have a Facebook page, it is very easy to create one and search for specific groups to join. I'd love to hear from all of you who are active on Facebook to share your thoughts, concerns, and ideas.

Click Here to go to Facebook.com

Weekly Tip: Lesson Planning: Where to Start?

As a new teacher you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed as the start of the new school year approaches. There is so much to do to get ready for that all important first day of school. You may have already brainstormed a list of expectations and procedures to use in your classroom. Perhaps you’ve even sketched out how you want your classroom set up. If you are lucky you might have already seen your classroom and gotten a start in getting it organized. However, there is still the question of planning lessons. Where do you begin? How do you start?

First, there is no reason to make your life any more difficult than it already is. To begin you should contact your school and determine whether the school or district has a mandated curriculum. If so, your job has just been made a bit easier. Find out how you can access the curriculum, whether it is typed out in a manual or published online. While you still have the summer hours before your contract begins, take some time to become familiar with this curriculum.

If, however, you are like many teachers and must operate without a curriculum, the second step is to talk to your principal and ask for the contact information of any other veteran teachers on your grade level or in your department. One or more of these colleagues may be a treasure trove of information regarding what you should teach in the first couple of weeks of school. The tricky part will be in getting one or more of these people to actually talk about school and the curriculum prior to in-service days. Hopefully you’ll get lucky and have a very energetic helpful veteran teacher colleague who is eager to help you start planning. However, be ready for some caustic comments and the possibility of being told you are jumping the gun. Don’t get discouraged. Some of these more veteran teachers may have forgotten what it’s like to be anxious and eager as well as overwhelmed with trying to learn everything in the space of a couple of days. Just keep trying until you find a willing partner.

If that particular option also falls short, the next step is to go to the school and request the Teacher Edition of each and every textbook you are required to use. Most will have a Scope and Sequence and will give you at least a general idea of what should be taught when. Textbook companies try very hard to match their Scope and Sequence to the State Standards. The only problem you’ll face is if you are working with decades old textbooks. Your state may have changed their standards since then.

From that point you’ll want to go online to your State Department of Education and locate the actual State Standards. Most are published online by grade level and subject area. These will be written as general goals and some specific objectives. You’ll want to print these off to better study them. If there is no school or district curriculum, no textbook or other materials, and no veteran teacher to consult, the State Standards should guide your lessons. Start by organizing the objectives in a way that makes logical sense starting from the most basic to the more complex. Or, organize the objectives that move seamlessly from one concept to another. Re-write them in the order that will make the most sense for students to effectively learn each. Now you have a guide for planning your lessons.

Next week we’ll talk about creating a guide for long-term planning using goals and objectives.

Newly updated, Survival Kit for New Secondary Teachers contains advice and tips from veteran teachers geared specifically for middle and high school teachers. This handy resource helps teachers organize ideas, maintain a positive classroom environment, motivate students, communicate with parents, and manage their classroom and students. New updates include information on learner differentiation and understanding/implementing Bloom's Taxonomy along with other tips and ideas for the classroom. Also includes a chapter with advice for obtaining a classroom teaching job. Click HERE to learn more about this book! Also Available as an eBook!